Buckminster Fuller: everything I know
Everything I Know During the last two weeks of January 1975 Buckminster Fuller gave an extraordinary series of lectures concerning his entire life’s work. Introduction These thinking out loud lectures span 42 hours and examine in depth all of Fuller’s major inventions and discoveries from the 1927 Dymaxion house, car and bathroom, through the Wichita House, geodesic domes, and tensegrity structures, as well as the contents of Synergetics. Autobiographical in parts, Fuller recounts his own personal history in the context of the history of science and industrialization. The stories behind his Dymaxion car, geodesic domes, World Game and integration of science and humanism are lucidly communicated with continuous reference to his synergetic geometry. Permeating the entire series is his unique comprehensive design approach to solving the problems of the world. Some of the topics Fuller covered in this wide ranging discourse include: architecture, design, philosophy, education, mathematics, geometry, cartography, economics, history, structure, industry, housing and engineering. The “Everything I Know” video series is also available online at archive.org/details/buckminsterfuller. Un-Edited, Un-Cut The printed work below is a transcript of those lectures. Painstakingly typed word for word from audiotapes, these transcripts are minimally edited and maximally Fuller. In that vein you will run into unique Bucky-isms: special phrases, terminology, unusual sentence structures, etc. Because of this, as well as the sheer volume of words, we expect you may find places that need editing, refining and improving. Therefore, we invite you to participate! We hope that by your using it as an active resource you can, through your comments, suggestions and feedback, become a participant in the process of annotating, editing, footnoting, updating and illustrating the information it contains. This way it will become progressively more useful to more and more people. The more it is used the more useful it can become! Send us your edits by simply sending us a copy of the page(s) that you think need changes, marked with your suggestions and edits by email on our contact page. We will then make the appropriate adjustments to be integrated and published in the newer versions of the work over time. We are grateful to make this work available and look forward to its evolution into an evermore useful, refined, and expanded document. — The Buckminster Fuller Institute Acknowledgments We would like to gratefully acknowledge and thank JoAnne Ishimine, whose care and dedication in transcribing the entire 42 hours of the “Everything I Know” series as a volunteer was an inspiration in getting this project off the ground. Her contribution is a striking example of what one individual can do, and in this project she has made a big difference. We would also like to acknowledge Ed Applewhite for his foresight and commitment in producing the outstanding outline which he prepared while in attendance at the lectures, and for which he has over the years allowed us to include as part of the “Everything I Know” publications. In addition we would like to thank dedicated volunteers Russell Chu, Jim Morrisett, Robert Orenstein and the many BFI staff members who assisted in various aspects of the preparation of materials. Copyright First Edition Published by the Buckminster Fuller Institute Contact us for more Information Copyright © 1997 Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller